I’ve been happily running 13.1 for some time on this machine, and the HP LaserJet 5 attached to it has never had a problem. But in the last few days I did a clean installation of 42.1, and the HP driver doesn’t want to work. No matter which of the available drivers I choose, it doesn’t want to print correctly, even a test page. It is sending to the machine, via LPT1, but what emerges is several pages of gibberish. Any help would be appreciated.
Welcome to openSUSE Forums. Does this happen regardless of the type of document being printed? Does printing a test page complete successfully?
If you try printing to file (as a .ps or.pdf file) first, then print from CLI with something like ‘lpr -P printer_name /path/to/file.ps’, does the page print properly? For example
lpr -P HP_printer example.ps
BTW, without knowing exactly what has been tried or how many attempts at printing has been made, has the printer been power-cycled as part of the diagnostic process?
It produces the same gibberish, no matter if printing from Thunderbird or LibreOffice or from CUPS, and no matter how many times the printer & or machine have been power cycled. When I try to force the print as per your suggestion, I get " Bad page-ranges values 0-0. " This is true whether I print to file to a .pdf or to a .ps file. (The print system does work sending to another printer, a Brother color inkjet.) I don’t remember which driver I was using under 13.1, but I don’t recall any setup problems. Alas, I overwrote the existing hard drive when I did the clean install.
Try using the ‘lp’ command instead
lp -d <printer_name> example.ps
I’m keen to understand if a .ps file can be printed without issue.
The driver name can be got using
grep -H '^*NickName:' /etc/cups/ppd/*.ppd
- Just the output pertaining to the LaserJet printer.
This CUPS troubleshooting guide may be of help in determining where the problem lies in case a bug report is needed…
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_debug_printing_problems#Finding_where_the_problem_lies
First, sorry for the long delay but life has managed to get in the way. When I forcefeed the postscript file to the printer, it still produces gibberish. I have tried all the various drivers available for the LaserJet 5, and they all produce this problem. If I attempt to use the HP Device Manager, it says that there are no installed HP devices found, even after I’ve installed the printer. If I use hp-setup, it isn’t aware of the parallel port. However, CUPS is more than happy to let me install / modify / delete the printer. So I dug up an hold hard drive, and re-installed 13.1 on that drive. That version happily installs the printer and sends output just fine. Next, I did a clean install of 42.1 on that same drive, and it works just fine. In both cases, the driver is found at /usr/share/cups/model/manufacturer-PPDs/hplip/hp-laserjet_5mp-ps.ppd.gz . When, under the HP Device Manager, I click on Diagnose Driver, a new terminal window opens, and after a few seconds I get “error: This distro (i.e suse 42.2) is either deprecated or not yet supported.The diagnosis is limited on unsupported platforms. Do you want to continue?(y=yes*, n=no):” If I enter y, it trundles for a while and eventually produces “No plug-in printers are configured.” {Full output available, I copy/pasted to a text file.} I can also modify the printer via Yast, either as the local user or as root.
Interesting. So, to summarise concisely: the HP LaserJet 5 printer works fine with both openSUSE 13.1 and Leap 42.1, but not with 42.2 apparently.
Any differences between the OS versions with how the printer (connected and turned on) is enumerated via the CUPS backend?
Run it manually like this
/usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
BTW, I assume you have the ‘parallel-printer-support’ package installed otherwise the parallel port wouldn’t be active at boot?
https://software.opensuse.org/package/parallel-printer-support?search_term=parallel-printer-support
…very nice! Had problems with parallel HP Laserjet 5P on TW recently. Now I know why! It’S a shame that even Linux is now involved in these hardware-deprecation games by HP and Canon. Have an old Canon scanner doing fine on 13.2, but unusable in TW. One of the reasons I came to Linux was to get rid of this “No driver available for new Windows version” and now this! It’s a mess…
Drivers are available, but there seems to be some other issue at play here, and just a bit of effort required to find what might have changed/regressed here.
[snip] So, to summarise concisely: the HP LaserJet 5 printer works fine with both openSUSE 13.1 and Leap 42.1, but not with 42.2 apparently. [snip]
Exactly so; and parallel-printer-support is installed. When I run /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel I get
[snip]
direct parallel:/dev/lp0 “HP LaserJet 5MP” “HP LaserJet 5MP LPT #1” “MANUFACTURER:Hewlett-Packard;COMMAND SET:HP ENHANCED PCL5,PJL,POSTSCRIPT;M
ODEL:HP LaserJet 5MP;CLASS:PRINTER;DESCRIPTION:Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 5MP Printer;COMPATIBLE ID:HP_LaserJet_4/4M_Plus_PS,LPTENUM\Hewlett-Pac
kardHP_LaC3A1;” “”
[snip]
Further, Yast tells me that hplip 3.16.5-1.5 is installed. When I run hp-check -t it tells me
[snip]
Missing Required Dependencies
None
Missing Optional Dependencies
error: ‘python-notify’ package is missing/incompatible
error: ‘avahi-utils’ package is missing/incompatible
[snip]
I managed to download hplip 3.16.11; I’ll see where that gets me.
That checks ok, and means that CUPS can detect the printer as expected.
BTW, as the printer is a postscript printer, you could just use a generic postscript configuration as CUPS is capable of handling this directly.
[snip] you could just use a generic postscript configuration as CUPS is capable of handling this directly. [snip]
Alas, that doesn’t work, either. Neither did the updated version of hplip. And for what it’s worth, the printer happily churns out correct output when hooked to another (Winbox) machine. At this point I think I’d rather roll back and install 42.1 than jump through the MAKE hoops. For now I’ll just send things to the Brother ink jet machine I’ve also got hooked to this system. I might just try installing some other flavor of Linux on a spare drive just to see what’s going to happen, but I really don’t have gobs of time to spare right now.
Unfortunately, statements like this don’t help with finding the root cause of an issue, or what steps you took… too vague to be useful.
At this point I think I’d rather roll back and install 42.1 than jump through the MAKE hoops. For now I’ll just send things to the Brother ink jet machine I’ve also got hooked to this system.
Well, at least you have a working option for printing.
FWIW, a week or so ago I developed problems with a newer HP laserjet (on ethernet, not parallel port) using Leap 4.1. Finally got it working again by deleting the printer in YaST, downloading the latest HP Device Manager from the link mentioned up thread, and adding a new printer using the HP Device Manager (or toolbox). It may be that it would have worked fine with the already installed HP Device Manager but I did not try the printer removal and add back in before upgrading to the newer HP Device Manager. I chose the .ppd file that the HP app “recommended” during the setup.
jon